1) I am breaking international laws regarding privacy and secrecy by publishing this information.

2) I am not going to disclose my location since I know that any attempt to prove what I’ve seen or what I’ve been part of will result in my immediate and thorough extermination.

My name is Dr. Edward Mantill and I was (technically still am) a physicist at CERN, located in Geneva, Switzerland. I specialize in particle and subatomic research, focusing on quark interactions. In other words, I study very very small particles and how they interact with one another at very high speeds.

Until Thursday, Jan. 15, 2014 I was a normal scientist living and working on the CERN campus. Most of the scientists who are involved in the branch of research that I am live on campus at the facility in Geneva and venture out only for social activities and the occasional visit home.

Most of you who have heard of CERN will have heard of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) the largest scientific instrument which exceeds 20 miles in diameter and travels under the sovereign territory of two countries (Switzerland, France). The public has been told that it was constructed at a cost of tens of billions of Euros for the purpose of studying the birth of the universe and the collisions that take place within the collider allow us a quick glimpse at certain phenomenon that can only be witnessed when particles hit one another at incredibly high rates.

This is NOT what the machine was designed for, nor is it what the machine has been used for since it’s inception.

CERN’s main purpose for building the Collider was too, well it was to open a door way.

Allow me to explain: the doorway idea came into fruition in the 1960s. After years and years of attempting to hide UFO phenomenon, including large scale and very public interactions such as the Roswell incident, and the Battle for Los Angeles incident well before that, the governments of the United States, Great Britain, and France decided to throw their weight behind the understanding of what precisely these objects were.

The ideas flew far and wide. Were UFOs from another planet? Were they from another time? Or where they simply mass hysteria and mass delusion fueled by the overactive imagination of a public who were shit scared of communists and their technology? No, they were none of those.

Our universe is but one page in a large book. Think of a closed book sitting on a table: you see each page stacked on top of one another, bound by the spine and sandwiched between the two covers. Our universe is but one page in a vast and all-encompassing book.

And our page is certainly not the only one with rich, in depth thought and writing committed to it. Every page in the book represents a different dimension each with it’s own unique writing, own unique story, own unique way of isolating itself from the other pages. No page was to interact with the other, just as no ink bleeds from one page to another in a standard book. Each page, a universe unto itself.

Within a few short years of mathematical research and fleets of scientists working under threat of extermination should they share their research, the book idea was finally cemented. Though many disagreed, the mathematics were there to support the book idea, and the mathematics also showed us that it was impossible for one page to interact with another. That was, until the 1980s.

During the 1980s billions of dollars of research was funnelled into the idea that if we used enough energy, if we used enough force, concentrated into a small area (the size of a pin prick) we could theoretically tare our page and get a glimpse of the page next to ours. We could open a door from their universe to ours.

When the Family (the code name for the group of scientists that functioned as the head of each of their departments at CERN) were shown the initial presentation in March of 1981, many of them expressed grave concern about the ramifications of opening such a doorway. But in the beautiful name of science, the Family decided to share these ideas with the governments who constantly funded their research.

At a meeting held in Luxembourg, the heads of state of the newly forming European Union, along with the United States and China were shown plans for the construction of a colossal machine that would enable the opening of a doorway that could be closed at our discretion. The door would be opened, and the energy levels would be measure to prove that CERN had accomplished its task, and the door would be closed.

Open. Shut. Simple as that.

The government leaders threw endless funding at the Family and the rest of CERN in the hopes of understanding what kind of power lay in another universe. Think of the possible endless source of Energy, faster than light travel, weaponry that could obliterate enemies using laser. The possibilities for power were truly staggering.

So, the public was fed one narrative (“understanding the universe”) and the Family and governments knew the truth. Most of the scientists at CERN were kept completely in the dark, after all the collider would perform it’s function as normal and collide particles for eager funding hunters to capitalize on. But the far more nefarious purpose would only be tested in the presence of the Family and a few select scientists.

I am the member of the Family for my division. Obviously the original Family have all retired or died out, but there is a new, younger, more eager to prove themselves group now at the helm, and the consequences of this were and are dire.

So, with that established, allow me to explain what happened last thursday.

It was an ordinary day with the LHC scheduled to commit two collisions, one at 9am and the other at 630PM. Both went off magnificently and the experiments were deemed a success. We witnessed two full collisions and the general group of researchers were very happy with their work. Around 7pm, most of the team had filtered out of the observation room, and the machine had been put into it’s usual stand-by mode.

As the room emptied, the ID clip that I had on my waist, which had a built in display and vibrator, started to go off. I looked down at the display and it said in very faint green writing “Living room,” I knew right away what they were going to attempt.

I looked up from the badge and caught the eye of Dr. Celine D’Accord, another member of the Family and the head of plasma physics. She too had just looked up from her ID badge. We both understood and left.

“Living room,” was a large room under the main facility located in A-section. The room wasn’t special in any way and appeared completely normal. This was key to hiding our true intentions. If we met in a secret underground bunker instead of the regular basement, we’d arouse suspicion every time we were going to run an experiment.

As Celine and I made our way from the collider to section A, the cold Swiss air hit my face and burned as we booked it across the campus. The night was exceptionally clear, and this factor further bolstered my suspicion. They always liked doing these experiments on clear nights.

We entered Section A and made our way to the main building. The doors opened up as we approached and we made our way to the elevators across the wide expanse of a lobby with the vaulted ceilings. The RFID signal given off by our name badges caused the elevator doors to open before we had even pressed the button. As we stepped in, the doors shut and the elevator began to move.

“I’ll never get used to that,” Celine said, referring to the degree of automation that the buildings displayed. We had been scheduled for a meeting in the Living Room, and the building knew, so all strategic lights were on, and elevators were reading where we needed to go. The miracle of networking.

We exited the lift and made our way to the regular board room, the door was shut and assembled inside was the Family. At the head of the table was Father, a young, rather ambitious physicist named Sandra O’Reilly, designated, “Father,” since she was in charge of giving orders to the Family with respect to our clandestine experiments.

The mood in the living Room was never tense, but rather one of controlled excitement. The Family had been attempting these tests once every 6 months for the past 10 years without much success. We had gone through several, “Fathers,” from the great Dr. Bertramberg to the lesser known and constantly drunk Dr. Yao, Each had failed to achieve what the original Family had planned. Billions were spent, but no door had yet been opened.

“Tonight, we try 40 Tera Electron Volts,” Father announced. Her announcement brought an immediate and total silence to the room. Family members looked from one to the other, some with feigned excitement, others with revered concerned, all with a general sense of disbelief.

“The last four trials were between 10-20TeV, we’ve never tried anything that high! We don’t know if the machine can handle a test of that magnitude,” protested Dr. Akava, head of mathematical physics and chief of the department that should be certifying whether or not 40 TeV was even a healthy thing to do.

“We have reviewed the possible outcomes, and even though we will have to pull twice the amount of energy out of the grid, the Swiss government have been advised and are cooperating,” Father quickly retorted. Her sweet, controlled tone actually did help the situation.

I looked over and Celine had been frantically writing down some calculations on a piece of paper, after a few seconds she shot up from her seat “Father, even if we try to reach 40 TeV, the math doesn’t support that this is possible! We can’t just throw the collider to the highest setting and hope for the best!”

“Are there any other objections that you would like noted before we begin the experiment?” Father asked, completely ignoring Celine’s desperate pleas. Father surveyed the room and could see that she wasn’t going to be met with other objections, after all what was the point, they were going to go unheeded.

“Excellent, then we shall proceed, meet in the control room at 22:00 hours,” Father announced as the Family got up from the table and left the Living Room. No one said a word, we left in complete silence, made our way into the lift, and exited the building into the cold Swiss night.

If the machine couldn’t handle the electron voltage, it could become structurally unstable and break apart, but being buried underground prevented this from being a catastrophe. There wouldn’t be loss of life, but the LHC would be rendered useless and billions of dollars worth of funding would be destroyed.

On the other hand, if the experiment was successful and the door opened, could we close something functioning on 40 TeV? Our math had supported 10 TeV, 20Tev, Fuck even 30 TeV, but no one had dared go above that. However this is where our role as scientist ended and our regrettable role of secret experimenter began. All we could do was say yes.

At 22:00 hours, with the Family assembled in the control room, and the handful of select CERN employees who understood the true nature of the experiment milling around, we commenced our grand try.

“Begin,” was the only order that Father issued. The Family members at the control entered the required programming to begin the collider, and so our fateful experiment began.

“Release the First particle sample,” came the command. A few seconds later the sound of gas entering the collider could be heard. The gas started it’s 20+ mile journey around the collider gaining more and more speed.

“Release the second particle sample,” another sound of whooshing gas entering the tube and travelling into the opposite direction as the first. Both gaining speed, travelling faster and faster, approaching the speed of light. Like two runners, running around a circular track in opposite directions, not touching one another.

“Father, we are approaching 30 TeV” one of the commanders warned.

“Excellent, increase the energy to 35 TeV within the next 3 Minutes,” Father’s commands once again brought grave concern. If anything was going to happen it was going to happen now.

“Increasing to 35 Tev” came the announcement over the intercom system. We all continued to look at one another, the concern growing graver and graver.”

“Achieving 38 TeV” another announcement. But nothing, no explosion, no catastrophic failure, nothing. In theory 40 was possible, but never advisable, however at 38, no specific structural damage signs were noted, nothing.

“40 TeV achieved.” We looked at one another in astonishment. We had achieved what we thought was impossible: 40 TeV of energy was pushing the particles through the collider and we were sustaining it.”

As the two particle clouds whizzed past each other, our first indication that something different was going to happen started to occur. There was a sudden spike in the temperature of the room. we could feel that it had gotten warmer, and the first reaction was one of panic.

“SHUT THE MACHINE DOWN!” Came the first exclamation from a Family member. “The Machine is heating up, explosion could be imminent!” She continued.

“WAIT!” Exclaimed father, her eyes glowing with the reflection of the computer screen in front of her, “Look at the core temperature read out, they haven’t changed, they’re perfectly normal!” We each looked at the closest computer screen we could find, all of them showing that everything was going well, except for the fact that the thermostat in the room now read 35 degrees celsius, when we started out at a pleasant 20.

Could this be it?

“COMMENCE THE COLLISION SEQUENCE.” Father barked the order into the microphone near her control console.

“Collision in 4…3…2…” The methodical voice announced over the intercom.

“1” – An ethereal blinding light consumed the room, I had never experienced anything like this before. The temperature dropped back down to 20 degrees, and the light was overpowering us. We couldn’t see our own hands in front of our faces.

Suddenly there was a blood curdling scream, like someone being horribly beaten, followed by complete and total silence and then darkness.

“Is everyone ok!” Celine was shouting from her side of the room.

“I’m fine!” I called back, “Sound off!”

“Mantill, code: Fam-0113”

“D’Accord, Code: Fam-0115”

“Chung, Code: Fam – 0114″

The Family members present started to scream out their names and code designation as our eyes adjusted to the total darkness that had encompassed the room.

With the sound of a bang the emergency red lighting bathed the room in a lambent glow. We could make out shadows, but no distinguishing features. By this time, approximately 2 minutes after our encounter with the white light, we still had not heard Father sound off.”

“Where is Father!” Dr. Chung called out. We all turned to the seat that Father sat in, and could see a lump on the chair, but no sign of her. I entered the panel code to open the emergency exit and made my way through the escape corridor to the lighting box at the end of the hall. I turned the breaker and the normal lighting filled the control room again.

Panic struck for Father’s well being I turned and ran back into the control room.

All of my fellow scientists were in complete and total awe. Nothing in the room was out of place, and the temperature had returned to normal, however sitting in Father’s chair was a pile of her effects.

Celine ran up to the chair Father once filled and looked down with a gasp.

“She’s gone! All of her things are here, her jewellery, her clothes, her tamp…, everything!” Where Father sat now rested her physical possessions.

She had vanished into thin air.

“SEAL. THE. ROOM.”

Over the next 10 minutes a series of both helpful, and painfully obvious commands erupted from Dr. Chung. He was the senior scientist in the room and was almost a father figure not only to myself but to many of my fellow physicists.

Headcounts were conducted amongst the 22 scientists outside of the Family, who were recruited to be part of the experiment. Luckily, Father’s disappearance seemed to be an independent occurrence.

The fact that the main control room was filled with senior scientists helped us handle the situation so much better. Methodical training and a fear of contamination of both material and electronic information was the most important concern at that time. We hurried to commence the network backup procedures that we were trained to undertake in the event of failure. The remains of Father’s effects were removed (with a ruler acting as a pair of tongs), and carefully stored in 3 UPS bags (the only sealable thing we could find).

The Family members worked in silence for a few minutes, the shouting from Dr. Chung having died down; the junior scientists milled around on the lower level, having been advised not to leave the facility. A general look of concern had started to make it’s way across their faces. They could feel from the tension in the announcements that something very wrong had happened, but had no idea of the degree of damage.

“You’re Mother, so you’re now in charge, Chung,” announced Dr. Nevga Thani, the Indian scientist, whose unassuming grandma-esq shape betrayed her sharp tongue and short tolerance for bullshit,

“You shouldn’t jump to conclusion Nevga, Arthur can’t take charge until we’re sure that Father isn’t here.” Celine snapped at Nevga, tensions were running high and we were beginning to fray. Strong leadership was needed and Arthur Chung was the man. He had been designated by Father to take control of all security related matters pertaining to the Family two weeks prior to the incident. Arthur was number two; Arthur was Mother.

“She’s right, Sandra’s not here, and she could very well be in danger. For the time being, I’ll take control and attempt to coordinate what we should do. Our first decision has to be who to alert. I understand that the protocol calls for letting the Ministry of Defence know, but which other Swiss officials are on the list?”

“You can’t be serious. We can’t tell a single soul about this!” I couldn’t keep quiet any longer, I shot up from the chair that I had been lounging in while the Family politics played out. We couldn’t tell anyone. There were very good reasons for this.

“Firstly, we’ve known from the beginning that if we were ever successful, we would be under heavy police surveillance and military scrutiny. Our lives would never be the same, but we would make the sacrifice, all in the name of science. But what now? What will they do to us now? We WERE part of the experience. The light emersed all of us. If they can’t find Father they’re going to go after their next best samples. ”

“We’ll be studied, tested, and tested again. Who the fuck knows! Maybe vivisection?!Who knows! If we were just successful, we opened a door and didn’t know how to handle it, and now one of our own has vanished.”

“We CANNOT tell!”

I was screaming by the end of my tirade, my blood boiling with a sense of injustice. We could have just made the best discovery in science, but the reward would be torture or who the fuck knows what else.

“Calm down, We cannot jump to conclusions.” Mother’s soothing tones were one of the major reasons why he was designated to take charge if things fell apart.

“Edward is right, but we have to ensure that this is dealt with only amongst ourselves. We’ll dismiss the assistants; fewer bodies, fewer eyes and ears.” Mother kept the calm. Father would have LOVED the fact that we were being clandestine about the whole matter. She never followed protocol.

The juniors were assembled and advised that there was an excess bleed of energy through one of the circuit breakers and it exploded. The bright light was the ensuing fireball which was a result of the explosion. Fire services have been notified. Everything was calm.

“Ok, what do we know?” asked Mother, who had ascended the stairs to the control room on the second level after dismissing the assistants. The remaining members of the Family had been instructed to continue searching, just as they had immediately after the lights came back on, just like they had after turning control over to Mother. And quite like before, our searching was fruitless.

The doors of the control room were locked during the experiment and there was no way in nor any way out. We were sealed in there. Even if Father had managed to cross the room from her control console without touching any of us, and had managed to enter in the correct 9 digit code to unlock the door to leave the room, all while the entire room was being filled with blinding light, she sure as hell wouldn’t have had time to strip.

“She’s not here, we’ve searched all the possible rooms, and nothing. She’s vanished, we have no alternate explanation.” Celine concluded. She had quickly realized that the likelihood of Father still being present was next to none.

“Were we successful? Has anyone reviewed the data.” Nevga croaked from her position in the corner. She was staring directly at me while asking, as if I had any idea what the data stated

“The computers are still backing up the experimental information, we can review in about three minutes. Have we tried to access the CCTV feed?” I responded. The CCTV could hold some clue to clarifying what we had experienced.

“Try and access the loop Celine!” I called out to her as she was hunched over the first console that had finished backing up. “I’m on it,” she responded.

After a few short moments a sound of contentment emitted from Celine. Not quite a squeak, not really a scream, and we all turned to look at her, “I’ve got it!” We rushed over to the display and crouched around, hopefully the security feed could clarify all of this.

“Nothing but white light.”

The first few minutes of the video showed Father and the rest of us at the beginning of the experiment, and then the camera white’s out at a certain point due to the blinding light that had filled the room. The image adjusts and it’s us in the dark panicking about the disappearance Father.

“Utterly Useless,” a deflated Celine admitted what the rest of us were too afraid to say. We were left with no recorded evidence of what could have been the singular most important moment in recent science.

Mother’s computer had finished it’s backup cycle and he began accessing the information harvested during the collider run.

“Everything seems normal, nothing is out….” He stopped midway through his sentence.

“We did it. We fucking did it!” This was the first time that I had ever heard Mother swear and it would have naturally unsettled me if he hadn’t just announced that we had changed the world.

“What!? What does it say?” I belted out from across the room. I had to know. We had to know.

In layman’s terms, we had concentrated the amount of energy required to tear our page. We saw a few letters on the other page, but the door slammed shut too soon to make any reading possible. But it had been done.

“So what happens now?” I asked. Not knowing how to proceed.

“Our main priority right now remains Sandra and her location. We’ve established that the experiment was a success and her disappearance occurred at the same time. We cannot assume that they are related, but the chances are high that they are.” Mother announced in his soothing tone.

“We have to replicate.” Nevga’s voice broke the calm created by Mother. “Our agreement with the Geneva power grid expires at 02:00, which is less than 2 hours away. We can rerun the experiment, and then see what the outcome is. We know we can open the door, maybe Sandra will come back.”

Celine dashed across the room and confronted Nevga, “Are you insane?! We can’t replicate the experiment. We should have alerted the authorities over an hour ago when this first happened, now we look like we’re conspiring to cause more damage! The chance of Sandra falling, naked, out of the sky are just as likely as one of us vanishing! You may be 400 years old, but I am not ready to endanger myself! I’m still young!”

Mother interjected, “Quiet. Our window is closing, we have limited options. The radiation and air quality sensors in the room did not register any excessive disturbances that would be harmful to us, and we have enough of a skeleton crew amongst the 8 of us to run the collider.”

“I will NOT be a part of this!” Celine protested, “ I refuse to compromise my safety again in the blind hope that we can somehow call Sandra back into the room! This is madness!”

“You can excuse yourself if you want, but you may not leave the building. If you’re not going to contribute, stay out of the way” Mother was kurt with his response, and very rarely did he take such a terse tone.

Celine stormed out of the room and made her way down the access stairs towards area the assistants once filled. She opened the access door and entered the observation area.

“Edward, prime the collider, Nevga, take the second console, Jim…” Mother stationed the remaining members of the Family to independent tasks once executed by a team of 3-5 scientists. They were the top of their fields, but this would prove a difficult task.

With my hands on the release valve, I heard mother give the “Prime for Collision,” order which brought the massive machine to life. It would be approximately 22 minutes before enough power to attempt the collisions had been displaced from the grid into CERN’s reserves.

We worked like a perfectly oiled machine, years of study and practice had brought the Family to this point.

With the particle clouds released and running against one another around the track, the collider was ready to attempt it’s newest collision.

“Commence the Collision Sequence,” Mother’s order was clear, crisp and concise. I entered the required programming and waiting.

“Collision in 4…3…2…”

Again the white light. The thick, dense, clean, all-consuming, white light filled the control room. I could see it creep up on me, no sense of direction available after it hit, nothing visible except for the pure bright spot that it emanated from.

This time there was no scream, but more of a loud thud. The power surge caused the safety shut-off to trip again and just as before we found ourselves in the dark room.

“Chung, code: FAM-0114”

“Thani, code FAM-0080”

“Mantill, code: FAM-0010”

The remaining Family members sounded off, and waited the necessary 30 seconds before the red emergency lighting would activate. Had it worked, what was the thud. Was it Sandra, and was she dead?

The red lighting enabled. Lying in the center of the room, slightly bruised but overall appearing normal and completely naked lay Father. We scrambled over one another to reach her.

“Stop!” Yelled Mother. He had gone down the same corridor I had to hit the lighting reset button. The regular lighting turned on, and we could see Sandra clearly. She was breathing, but we knew what we had to do. Mother was right, no touching.

“Is she breathing?” Mother asked.

“Yes, I can see her abdomen moving up and down,” Nevga responded. She had crouched next to Father and made no attempt to hide her concern. Even though she was tough, Sandra was a member of the team, and deserved her best effort.

Mother threw a pair of gloves towards Nevga. “Check her pulse.” He ordered.

Nevga obliged and began measuring her pulse. In the mean time, a Family member had brought over a spare lab coat so that Father could have some dignity, even if she looked worse for ware.

At this point Celine reentered the control room and remained strangely quiet, even in the midst of all the excitement.

Nevga, content with Father’s pulse, began shaking her and calling her to get up. “Sandra! Sandra! Are you there? Can you wake up!” Sandra began to stir.

We all took a very obvious and very needed step back. We were so relieved to have Sandra back that we hadn’t thought of the true question at hand: Where had she gone to begin with.

“Sandra, it’s Nevga, can you hear me! Father, can you hear me!” Nevga continued to yell. Slowly, like a deer coming out of a long hibernation, Sandra began blinking her eyes. She made no attempt to sit up, but did shield her eyes from the lighting in the room.

“Ne..Nv…Nevga, can you, can you hear me?” Sandra asked weakly.

“Father! Welcome back!” Nevga’s face lit up as she threw her arms around Sandra.

The din in the room was cleaved by the sound of the cellphone in Mother’s coat pocket ringing.

“That was Hugo from the security division. He’s advised me that Celine contacted the Swiss authorities 45 minutes ago, their men have just crossed the security perimeter. Apparently we’re currently wanted.” Mother cooly explained.

All eyes turned away from Sandra and towards Celine, “How could you do that?! You’ve ruined us,” was the only phrase that I could think of screaming at her.

“We have to get out of here. Help Father up, follow me!” Mother ordered and dashed into the corridor adjacent to the control room.

He ran towards the control panel at the end of hall and typed in the 9 digit access code required to open the door. It wouldn’t budge. He turned and looked at the rest of the Family who had ran behind him, including Celine.

“We have to find an alternate way out, they’ve locked us in,” Mother explained, his cool beginning to wear thin. “We have to start the override procedure immediately if we have any chance of getting out of here! Nevga use the….” Mother’s instructions faded as I made my way back into the control room.

Panic was beginning to grip me as the possibility of used as a guinea pig began to crowd out my more rational thoughts. Suddenly a faint alarm began to sound and the following announcement came over the intercom.

“THIS IS COMMANDER ERICH EINMENCH OF THE SWISS FEDERAL PROTECTIVE SERVICES, WE ARE ENTERING YOUR FACILITY, DO NOT MAKE ANY SUDDEN MOVEMENTS, YOU ARE UNDER SURVEILLANCE. YOU ARE BEING DETAINED”

The booming voice kept repeating instructions to remain still. Nevga had sat herself at one of the terminals and was frantically trying to override the lockdown procedure that security had initiated.

“I can’t work quickly enough!” She said, looking up at me with real worries in her eyes. “This is my fault! I shouldn’t have pushed for a rerun!” The sound of the alarm became progressively louder.

Celine ran back into the room, followed by the remaining members of the family who had stayed in the corridor.

“Fuck it!” She exclaimed, and jumped onto the nearest terminal. She began viciously hammering away the keyboard, entering command after command.

Suddenly the collider sprang to life with the loudest sound I had ever heard. It was a combination of a fog horn and explosion.

I looked down from the control room just as the team of heavily armed security officers burst into the collider room.

“I’m Sorry,” Celine said. She looked up at me and entered one final line of code.

Another explosion.

The room filled with the same white light.

The light lingered, and the point of emanation was more defined than the past two occurrences. There was no looking away from it. It was the most comforting, beautiful light that I had ever seen. I was completely totally transfixed.

“Come! Run! Let’s go!” It was Celine, she reached out towards me and pulled me into her. I could finally make out the details of her face, her’s being only inches away from mine.

“We have to go now Edward!” She squeezed my hand and we slowly started to move forward. At least it seemed like it was forward; directions were absent when we were in the light.

She hit the wall and felt for the control panel. Even during her entire time of searching and feeling, she never let go of my hand. She felt around and was able to locate the control panel. My concentration, though wavering because of the phenomenon was still present enough to remember that we were screwed.

They had changed the access code, we were locked in the control room.

“I’ve got it, come on!” The sound of the door opening let me know that she was right; had she somehow guessed the access code? What was going on here?

As we fell into the corridor that abutted the control room, the light died down. It was more of a comforting glow than an all encompassing brightness. Celine pulled me off the ground and continued to hold my hand. She was running and I had to keep up. Years of smoking did not help this situation.

“Keep Up Edward!” She barked at me, letting go of my hand and breaking into a full sprint. “We have to get away from there!”

“I’m…..Coming!” I was panting heavy. Celine was familiar with the collider room and surrounding buildings, having been present at every one of the tests that were conducted since she joined the family. Darting from stairwell to hallway, I was beginning to lose my sense of location. I had no idea where we were.

“Stop,” Celine suddenly stopped running and was panting heavily. She was fit, but we had been at a full sprint for a good period, and even she was winded.

“Give me your ID card. Come on, quickly!” she ordered, and began reaching for my waist where the card hung. She pulled at it as hard as she could, but the retractable string made it impossible to wrench off. I reached down and helped her unclip it.

“We have to get rid of these, if we don’t they can and will track us,” she explained. She ran into a room at the end of the hall and called to me to follow her.

“Celine! What the hell is going on?! Why did you call them! Did you not think!” My exhaustion allowed me to tap into the quiet anger that I felt towards Celine. Mother explained how clean and clear her betrayal was, and it was coming rushing back”

I ran behind her into the room she had scrambled into and realized that she was attempting to pry open the window that sat in the wall farthest away from the door.

“Help me get this open!” She yelled, the strain evident in her voice. I ran towards her and helped her open the window. It had been months since anyone had cracked the damn thing, but now the fresh and relieving Swiss air filled the room. It was about 3am at this point and the campus was typically quiet. No sign that our armed friends had notified their backup. No sign that the Swiss government and their fellow colluders were hot on our trail.

Celine threw the ID tags out of the window, and they hit the ground 9 floors below. She turned towards me, her eyes affixed in a rictus of horror. She was extremely scared, as was I, but my disgust was still overpowering me.

“What the fuck is going on!? You’re running scared now but you made the call!” I snarled at her, my breath still short, the phlegm gathering in my throat.

“Edward, you have to trust me. We’ve done a terrible thing.” She ran past me, towards the door we had come through, and stuck her head into the hall. I spun around and could see that she was surveying the hallway to make sure we were alone. Celine closed the door, leaving a crack open so she could continue her watch.

“Close the window. We can’t let the sound of our voices drift outside,” she commanded; I obliged and shut the window.

“We’re going to keep the lights off, you stay by the window and keep watch. If you see anything strange let me know. I’ll keep a lookout here and if anything happens, we’ll go through that door and enter the adjoining room,” she said as she gestured towards the door on my right.

“Three weeks ago, I was asleep in my room when my ID tag went off. I wouldn’t have heard it had it not been vibrating on my nightstand. I reached for it, and it said “Living Room; Now” on the display. I had never been called to a meeting in the Living Room at that time of the morning, but I knew what I had to do.”

“Wearing my Pajamas I slipped on my boots, it had been blizzarding all night and the clean, white snow had covered everything. It was so beautiful Edward. I walked across the campus and entered Section A; I was in the Living Room a few minutes later.”

“In the room was myself, Father, and Mother. I thought that I had violated an order or messed up an experiment. There was no way this meeting was good. I immediately asked what was wrong, and Father explained the situation to me.”

“We were finally given clearance to go above 35 TeraElectronVolts (TeV) and knew that if we were going to be successful in this, we would have to start to push for stronger and stronger collisions. I was advised that we would be conducting a collision the following morning at 02:00 and only Father, Mother and myself would be present.”

“I was shocked, why wouldn’t CERN want more scientists present? I interrupted Father and Mother to ask why we were alone, and they advised that if anything should happen, if the connection to another existence was possible, we could not run the risk of information leaking out; that’s at least what they told me. I wanted you there Edward.”

I stood in awe watching Celine explain how myself and the rest of the family had been played. We felt like we had changed the world, when in fact we were runner-up, at best.

“I objected that the Collision couldn’t be run with only a crew of three people. Father and Mother advised that it could be, if we took 3 times as long to bring the collider up to speed. They were right; the three hour window would allow the three of us to enter the programming at a reasonable pace. It would be difficult, but we could do it.”

“I felt so proud, so wonderful, so fucking smart being chosen to be part of the team that was about to shatter the entire world’s perspective of itself. We were going to change existence.”

Celine’s eyes had started to gloss over, I could see tears forming in the corner, but she continued to push forward.

“The following night we started the experiment. As predicted it took three hours to bring the LHC up to collision standards. We started to raise the input from 5.5 TeV finally settling at 34.5TeV When we flipped over to 35, the light phenomenon happened. We were all terrified. We knew that we were successful, but we didn’t know what we were successful in achieving.”

“As the light died down we realized that Mother was missing. He had simply vanished into thin air. No trace of him whatsoever, the only thing that remained was a pile of his clothes and his glasses. Father and I desperately searched the lab not knowing what to do, and just like tonight we landed on the agreement that the only thing we could do, was rerun the collision and hope that we could somehow, anyhow, bring Mother back.”

“It took myself and Father almost a full day to prime the collider. Luckily we were left relatively alone to do our work; Father’s dominant sway and overpowering personality kept most of the nosey authorities off our asses. We stalled for time with such finesse, that even I believed the bullshit we were spewing.”

“Around midnight the following night, we ran the experiment again. Almost a full day had passed and our hopes of bringing back Mother were at an extreme low point. We ran the collision and like clockwork, the blinding light overpowered us, and when we came to, Mother was in the room.”

Celine’s story was unbelieveable. We had already “jumped”, and it was apparently decided that not sharing this information was the healthiest thing to do.

“When Mother remanifested, Father ran up to him. She embraced him with so much love that her respect for the man was glaringly obvious. In the ensuing fracas of checking vitals and establishing that Mother was in fact alive, not to mention also incredibly naked, he came to and began to become lucid.”

At this point I interrupted. “What the hell happened to him?! Was he able to give you details? What did he see. Holy shit, I can’t believe that we’ve done this twice and gotten away with it.” My fear was mixed with an almost childlike excitement at the prospect that we had discovered some sort of portal to another world.

“It’s not that simple Edward.” Celine adopted a whispering tone at this point, though I stuck to every word. This was life changing science, and I wasn’t going to miss a drop of it.

“We decided to tell the authorities that the trial was a failure, and that even 35 TeV wasn’t sufficient to open the doorway.To tear the page.”

“Even if the Swiss government tried to understand the results of the experiment, they would require the help of one of the Family, further increasing the likelihood of information leaking. We decided not to tell anyone for the same reason that you mentioned earlier. Could you imagine what they would do to him if they found out that Mother had made a leap or a jump or a shift or whatever pop-culture reference we want to use to refer to what happened to him?”

“Father tearfully begged me not to inform, to just keep it between the three of us. Even when pressed for answers Mother was at a loss about his experience. He recalled nothing, aside from an incredibly sense of calm and ease. He was under no pressure, encountered no one, and felt like no time had passed. His experience seemed unbelievable but harmless enough.”

It was a relief to know that Mother and Father’s trips were not detrimental to their wellbeing. Even though their happiness was really of no importance to me right now, Celine remained too quiet for this to be the end of her recounting.

“We were so wrong. Mother didn’t come back alone”

A cold chill filled the room. “What do you mean he didn’t come back alone?” I asked, dumbfounded.

“Everything seemed normal for a few days after the experiment. Mother displayed no symptoms, and Father and I had several conversations to make sure that our story about stalling for more time between Mother’s disappearance and reappearance lined up. It wasn’t until three days after the experiment that I realized what we had done.”

“My reluctance was getting the better of me. I had been present for the greatest scientific discovery in the history of the world, and I had watched as a fellow human had been ripped from our existence and then subsequently returned unharmed. Fuck, even astronauts go through a quarantine period after travel. Could Mother be infected with something? Could I go down in history as the scientist, the SCIENTIST, that let the next massive plague spread because I refused to identify patient zero, like my protocol demands that I do?”

Celine’s line of logic was clean and sound. She had witnessed something that could have exposed Mother to some dangerous pathogen that was quietly spreading. Celine continued.

“It began to weigh heavily on me, so I decided 5 days after the collision to tell the authorities. To be sure that I was going to be safely away from Mother when the authorities acted, I decided to jump into the security feed just like I had this afternoon. As I accessed the CCTV feeds, I saw Father making coffee in the main lab lounge area of Section K. Simple enough.”

She paused and locked eyes with me.

“Then I saw him entering a clean room from Section D.”

“Then I saw him walk across the green in front of Section C”

Celine stopped and looked at me.

“Celine, go on.” I urged.

“Edward, don’t you realize what I just said?” She asked in a deadpan tone.

“Yeah, you tracked him throughout the facility.” I responded back to her.

“No Edward, I didn’t see him do those things one after the other. I saw him doing them all at the same time. He was in Section D, C, and K, in the lab, in the lounge, and in the clean room, all at the same time!”

My mind needed a few seconds to process this.

“But how is that possible, someone would have noticed if multiples of the same person were just walking around the place. Did you check the timestamps in the videos?” My scientist mind refused to settle on the doppelganger theory; reason and logic never fail that badly.

Celine remained quiet for a moment, and then whispered in a terrified tone:

“You have to have felt the light in order to see them.”

Before I could react something in my peripheral vision caught my attention. I looked out the window and saw several dozen heavily armed men heading in our directions.

“We have to move, Celine. Now!” I ran across the room, grabbed Celine’s hand and dashed into the hall.